On the surface, Italian cartoonist Manuele Fior’s early-2000s graphic novel Red Ultramarine — just, and finally, released in a handsome, hardbound English translation by Fantagraphics — is a deceptively simple rumination on the dangers of ambition and obsession, creatively expressed by means of a dual-track narrative that juxtaposes a modern (I think, at any rate) Faust-derived cautionary tale revolving around a woman trying to save her architect love interest from his own OCD excess with a rather novel mash-up of the Greek myths of Daedalus/Icarus and Theseus/The Minotaur. Both stories are written in brisk and concise fashion, hitting just the right “beats” at just the right points to make the parallels between them obvious without belaboring matters, but Fior’s never been about “surface level” readings — and this is not only no exception, it’s the work that well and truly got the whole ball rolling in that regard.

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